FF – Peace and Love (and Moxy!)

Photo credit Dale Rogerson

Peace and Love

Ella sat on a pew and looked up. “I like churches; I always feel calmness wash over me in a church.”

“Some might call it God.”

Ella laughed quietly. “They might, but it’s not creed-specific. It’s there wherever people come to find peace.”

“If religion is about peace, how come it’s caused so many wars?”

Ella turned from the endless sky of the ceiling and looked at Jude. “Religions have started wars,” she insisted, “Faith is about finding peace. Feeling connected to all humanity.”

“Before you go and kill some of them,” Jude laughed.

“No God of mine would approve.”

Extroduction

First, a reminder that you shouldn’t need to read this to understand the story, which is intended to stand alone. I just like to ramble!

Earlier this month, I spent an absolutely wonderful week with my best friend, traveling by train to Halifax, NS (where we stayed in a hotel that signs off emails ‘Peace, love, moxy”) and home via Quebec City. We talked and laughed and walked a million miles between museums, restaurants and churches. While the first line of this story is how I feel in a church, Jude is not a representation of my friend, and this conversation is fictional. The never-ending blue sky is painted on the ceiling of Notre Dame in QC. As someone who has recently started trying to paint clouds, I loved staring at it.

My friend’s visit finished with a Mother’s Day trip to the theatre in Toronto, so this picture reminded me of one particular song. In the videos below, I was intrigued to note that while the theatrical staging of this song is blissful and heavenly, the cinematic version has a distinctly warlike feel. I’ll leave you to decide which you prefer.

FF – Glorious Technicolour

Photo copyright belongs to Alicia Jamtaas

Glorious Technicolour

“Why does the Bible show Jesus in colour?”

“Well Dear,” Ms Mwanna always calls me ‘Dear’ when I talk about the Bible, “Aren’t colourful pictures more fun?”

“Yes, but Jesus lived ages before you and you said you remember Black and White!”

She laughed, but nicely. Not like when Bruce Wickenson laughs at me in school. “Only the TV was black and white! I had a lovely yellow dress when I was your age. I even had red shoes once.”

“So when He died, His blood was red, like mine?”

“Of course! But his skin was probably more like mine.”

Extroduction

It’s been a while since I wrote about Melanie and Ms Mwanna. If you haven’t met them before, this story is intended to stand alone but if you enjoy them, they’ve had a few adventures over the years. You can find them here.

I could easily have found inspiration in one of the many aspects of Alicia’s beautiful image above, but the Muse felt drawn to the nature of the image itself, and this story was born. As ever, your feedback is welcome, good or bad.

FF – Aunt Selina’s Church

Melanie’s back! This photo immediately brought to mind the phrase ‘through a glass darkly’. I’ve used that before for a prompt, so I took a different part of the same verse for Melanie to muse on this week. If you enjoy her thoughts, you can find others here.

Aunt Selina’s Church

Before Mummy got sick, she wore a pretty dress and spoke at Aunt Selina and Puncle Eter’s wedding. They go to a weird church. Their priest smiles a lot and when they sing, they clap their hands and dance around.

Mummy said 1 Corinthians 13, but she changed it. She said “When I became a woman, I put childish things behind me.” Father Andrew wouldn’t like that, but their priest nodded and smiled.

And then, at the end, when he said “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” everybody cheered. Loudly.

I liked their church; I wonder what God thinks.

FF – Inside and Out

Since Melanie had a rerun last week, she has more to say. Hopefully, one day, a whole novel’s worth, but for now, she’s just commenting on the weather!

Photo copyright: David Stewart

Inside and Out

Church is always calm on the inside. Even when it’s stormy outside and the rain is soaking everything. Inside it’s quiet.

Not me. I get stormy on the inside. Like when I stood at the front and my tummy squiggled like breakfast was shouting to get out, but I couldn’t even say the Amen and Father Andrews sent me to sit down.

Then Sarah winked at me and my insides started giggling, but Father Andrews was watching so I made my outsides look like Our Lady.

I look at her sometimes and I wonder. Is she stormy on the inside?

FF – Merry Go Round #2

This week’s photo could have been taken for my story a couple of weeks ago. So much so, that I decided to add a part 2 from a different perspective. If you know Melanie’s story at all, you might wonder who this is. I had Mrs Mwanna in mind to begin with, but now I’m wondering if it could be her Dad. Up to you.

Feel free to read its precursor here first, afterwards, or not at all.

Thank you to Brenda Cox for this week’s photo. Not sure why WordPress isn’t letting me caption it direct.

Merry Go Round #2

The merry go round’s gone to rack and ruin.

That’s what I think when Melanie tells me her theory about God. The man in the middle is too busy spoiling everyone’s fun to notice the paint is faded and the horses have lost their smiles.

I know the emperor’s naked, but pointing it out would be counterproductive. For me, the beauty could never be the horses anyway. For me, it’s the little girl in the bright flowery dress who still sees gleaming gold and prancing ponies. The girl clutching my hand, squealing her delight and enjoying everything about the ride.

FF – Merry-go-round

This lovely image from Dale called up Melanie to me. You can read other stories about her by clicking on her name.

Merry-go-round

When I was little, I used to think the sun rose in the morning. Like God held onto a puppet string. Up in the morning, down at night, on and on for all eternity.

But Miss Carbo says the sun stays still and the planets go around it like ponies on the merry-go-round and the sun is the bit in the middle with all the mirrors and the music player.

So where is God if He doesn’t pull on a string? Maybe He’s the man who sits in the middle and shouts if you don’t stay sitting till it stops.

FF – A Single Candle

Photo credit to Na’ama Yehuda

A Single Candle

Father Michael was glaring, hellfire shooting at me out of his eyes. I stopped dancing and bowed my head, but it still felt like he was watching.

“We’re supposed to listen to the music. It makes us feel closer to God,” he said after. I knew he meant me.

I asked Ms Mwanna later. “How can God make Father Michael angry when He’s the one who made me dance?”

“Your God makes a lot of people angry,” she said. “Keep dancing, my girl. I reckon you’re closer to Him than they are anyway. One day, you’ll light up their darkness.”

Extroduction

Melanie is a recurring character in my blog, and one of my favourite characters to write. You can find more of her stories using the Melanie tag.

As for this story and photograph, snow in July throws me for a loop. A friend recently posted a skiing photo on Facebook. It took too many seconds for me to realise she hadn’t shared a memory… she lives in New Zealand!!

FF – Seeing God

Melanie is far and away my favourite character to write, so when she popped into my head with today’s FF photo after a long absence, I had to find time to record her thoughts and share them with you. My story begins below the prompt picture and I welcome all feedback.  If you enjoy Melanie even half as much as I do, click on her tag below, which will take you to some of her other musings.

Today’s prompt is from our esteemed leader, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. I’ve been watching a BBC documentary on Auschwitz recently and have been staggered, not for the first time, by the cheer incomprehensibility of what happened there, and elsewhere in Europe little under a century ago. Rochelle’s brand of historical fiction, set during another period of anti-semitic mass murder, is the kind of writing that I believe we need to turn shocking but incomprehensible statistics back into real emotions. I don’t think I’m the only person who finds it easier to feel for one person than for a million. Her novels are available on Amazon. I haven’t read them yet, but if they are anything like her short stories, they will make the reader do just that.

 

Seeing God

I see God sometimes. Not actually, because that’s only when you’re dead. And not like a burning bush or something… he doesn’t talk. And when I talk, it’s like he’s listening but he doesn’t answer, like Daddy watching the rugby and if I talk about something, he says “Yes, I’m listening,” but he doesn’t actually talk back about the thing.

Seeing God is like a big light in the sky, brighter than the sun. So bright you can’t see it, but it strokes things on the ground like fingers and you want to touch them, but they’re never quite there.

 

Friday Fiction – An Old One

Back home after our flying visit to the UK, but with a long list of things to do and a lovely-but-extra-challenging toddler, I’m going to take advantage of Rochelle‘s invitation to report my previous story for her repeated prompt. It took a while for me to remember what I’d written about for this one, but when I went back (August 2012) and read it, I was actually more pleased with it than I thought I’d been. Do tell me what you think!

Sin

Alice felt Liam’s hand on her bra. She didn’t dare look down, but she couldn’t look at his face either.  She wanted so much to enjoy this, but she’d heard too many stories about how easy – and how terrible – it was to get pregnant. Her gaze flicked away to the forest that was keeping them safe from prying eyes.

But God could see them.

As Liam’s fingers touched her skin, she screamed. High in one of the trees, a single eye stared out of a sheep’s bleached skull. The animal was dead, but the eye watched – omniscient, eternal and judgmental.

In Mon – Talk to Strangers

What a fantastic crop of InMon prompts this week. I want to use them all … but not in the same story. However, Melanie’s been playing in my head again, so she’s taken the front slot and here’s another snippet from her. And I’ve ended up nodding to two of the prompts.

If you’d like to see more, search “Melanie” to see other parts of her story, although this scene is intended to stand alone.

* * *

Daddy’s instructions had been very clear: “Take Mummy’s prescription to the counter, get the pills from the Pharmacist, pay, leave. Don’t get waylaid.” But Melanie liked getting waylaid; there was always so much to see and do when you got waylaid. And sometimes you got waylaid without meaning to. Like today, in the pharmacy, there was an old lady waiting in the next seat. And Melanie wasn’t really getting waylaid, because she was waiting for the Pharmacist to get Mummy’s pills ready.

“You’re a bit little to be here alone,” said the old woman. “Where’s your Mum?”

“At home,” Mel said, wondering if it was OK to talk to strangers if they were at the pharmacy.

The old woman looked kind, like Mrs Mwanna, only not black. She put her handkerchief in front of her eyes to blow her nose. “You came by yourself?” said the voice behind the handkerchief.

“No. Daddy’s waiting outside, only he couldn’t come in because he’s on the phone.”

“Ah.” The lady came out from behind her mask again. “That’s the problem with these mobile phones. Everyone is always on them. No time for anything.”

Melanie nodded and looked up at the pharmacists’ heads, bobbing behind their high screen. She wondered how long the medicine was going to be, because she was nearly late for school and she didn’t want to have to go and see the Head again to explain.

“They take their own time,” the old lady said, reading her mind like Mrs Mwanna could do. “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes.”

Melanie wondered how long she’d been waiting. Not twenty minutes, because the old lady had got here first, but it felt like forever.

“Do you go to St Bartholomew’s?” the lady said.

“Yes,” Melanie replied. And then she thought about it and wondered if the lady meant the church, which she did go to, or the school, which she didn’t because she was a big girl now and went to the big school, but it was too late to ask, because she had already answered.

The lady tutted. “I thought they had a uniform. I don’t go in for this modern idea of no uniform days. Supposed to be for charity, but it looks very scruffy and you can’t tell one child from another. In my day you knew exactly what to expect just by looking at the child.”

Melanie tried to count the bottles of Calcium tablets on the shelf beside her, but the numbers kept getting themselves confused whenever she listened to the old lady. She wondered whether to explain about the church and the school, but it wouldn’t really help, because her school did have a uniform and it wasn’t non-uniform day, her uniform was just in the wash because she’d forgotten to put the load through and Mummy had said she’d do it yesterday but then hadn’t been able to get out of bed, and so Daddy had said never mind he would write the Head a note. Only, thinking about it, Melanie remembered that he hadn’t given her a note and she would have to ask him when she got back to the car.

“I suppose you go to the church there as well?” the old lady said.

Melanie nodded.

The old lady tutted again. “Not my cup of tea,” she muttered. “I prefer a more shall we say enlightened communicant, if you know what I mean?”

Melanie nodded, although she didn’t.

“A little bit more forgive us our trespasses and a little bit less mine be the kingdom.”

“Ms Santori?” The lady pharmacist’s head appeared from behind the screen and the old lady stood up.

“Well, that’s me. At last,” she sighed. “You watch out for that priest of yours,” she added. “He’ll fill your head with fire and brimstone and leave no room for God’s love.”

Melanie nodded again and went back to counting the Vitamin bottles. It was easier now that nobody was talking to her, and she’d got all the way to two hundred and forty-seven when she heard Mummy’s name being called.